Phoebe has
396 books
(11 selected)
—
compare books
|
stats
| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin |
num
|
avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read | date added | date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0061996165
| 9780061996160
| 4.16
| 43,279
| Jan 04, 2011
| Jan 04, 2011
|
Just a warning: I’m about to get hyperbolic and all sorts of excited about a YA paranormal romance about angels. For those who know me, that might seem...more Just a warning: I’m about to get hyperbolic and all sorts of excited about a YA paranormal romance about angels. For those who know me, that might seem odd. I tend to be really, really picky about paranormal romance for teens unless it’s bad-ass and clearly Buffy-inspired (we’re talking Diana Peterfreund’s killer unicorn books, or L. J. Smith’s Night World series). And generally, angels are just conceptually too fluffy for me. What’s more, I’m not even vaguely Christian—at best, I’m a Jew, but really I’m more of a Godless agnostic. And so you might guess that fantasy firmly grounded in Christian mythology would miss the mark for me. You’d be wrong. The truth is, part of me has been waiting for a long time for a good angel book. Blame my pre-teen K-mart book habit. When I was eleven or twelve, my mom picked me up a copy of a book by Jahnna N. Malcolm and Laura Young called Rebel Angels. I don’t really remember anything about the book itself, but I do remember the cover—the neon sunset, the rebel-jacket-clad angel boy on the front and how the image sparked some note of excitement in my pubescent little brain. I was also a weirdly big fan of the mostly-terrible John Travolta flick, Michael. So, despite my areligious leanings, the same part of myself that would love an old Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper for nostalgia’s sake (do you know how hard they are to find?!) has been waiting for a really juicy angel book. I didn’t find it with Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush. I didn’t find it with Lauren Kate’s Fallen (which I didn’t even finish). But Cynthia Hand’s debut Unearthly finally delivered. I’ll admit, the premise is silly in places. Teen girl Clara learned she was a quarter-angel a few years ago and has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of her “purpose” ever since. When it finally comes, it’s in the form of a vision: she’s supposed to save a boy in Wyoming from a forest fire. Her family—Clara, her half-angel mom, and her brother—up and leave their California home for more mountainous pastures. There, she deals with integrating into a new school; getting to know Christian, the boy she’s destined to save; and her growing awareness of the war between the good fallen angels (whose wings are white) and the evil, black-winged Black Wings. Sigh. I know, guys, I know—it’s totally simplistic and cheesy to color-code your characters’ morality like that. But this is a book about angels, anyway—I hope you weren’t expecting a total lack of cheesiness, because I’d be disappointed if this book took itself completely seriously. And I’m telling you, it’s worth it to look past the silliness here because Unearthly manages to rise above it and present a truly compelling read, with really well-done characters. Clara is believable as a teenage girl with a purpose. She’s not always likable—in fact, she’s a bit self-centered and short-sighted—but she truly is empathetic. You feel for her when she talks about how she misses her father, or how she feels bad about the unfair advantages her super powers give her, or how hard it is to choose between the boy she loves and the boy she’s supposed to save. That’s right—there’s a love triangle here. Clara’s supposed to save cute, popular, rich-kid Christian, but instead ends up falling for cute, popular, poor-kid Tucker, her best friend’s brother. And both of these relationships are handled in a complex and interesting way. I can’t even say who I was really rooting for—either choice would be good; both have their problems. Two well-rendered boys who seem to be an equally appealing and equally flawed? To the point where it’s not easy to pick and choose a simple “team” to emblazon on your t-shirt? Why, it’s almost unheard of these days in YA. It’s also awesome. Hand doesn’t futz up her relationships between women, either. Clara has two best friends: half-angel Angela, and human Wendy. And while there are sometimes arguments and tensions between the girls, these relationships are still stunningly real, complex, and supportive. I expected one of them to be turned into a slutty stereotype or a villain or a catty mean girl, but they’re not—and even the school’s queen bee character is somewhat likable and fairly sympathetic. And Clara’s relationship with her mother—who teaches her how to be an angel, and supports her in finding her purpose, but still doesn’t quite understand her or respect her as an equal—is one of the most believable mother-daughter relationships I’ve seen in a long time. And speaking of realism, while this isn’t a Christian novel per se, it’s the first YA angel book I’ve read that actually acknowledges the existence of religion and Christianity beyond an appropriation of mythology and tropes. It’s done in a subtle, but realistic way, and the book is better for the acknowledgement of the religious questions that teens--particularly supernatural angel teens--face in their daily lives. Finally, amidst all of this, Hand’s writing is crisp, efficient, and uncluttered. Unearthly is written in present tense; I’m not usually a fan of present-tense novels, but she renders Clara’s narration in an effortless, unobtrusive way. The writing is at times pretty, but never overwritten, and there’s none of the adverbial mess you find with less capable writers of YA paranormal. In sum, Unearthly is the accomplished and compelling story of a girl coming into her powers as a woman, written respectfully, and well. For any reader who has been longing for an angel story that satisfies without reservation (and really, who hasn’t been longing for that?), I’d highly recommend it. Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from netgalley.com. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Nov 17, 2010
|
Nov 23, 2010
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1599957191
| 9781599957197
| 3.75
| 3,327
| Jan 01, 2007
| Aug 22, 2007
|
I have this weird fascination with fundamentalist Mormon polygamists. It started, of course, with Big Love. I’m not a particularly huge fan of the show...more I have this weird fascination with fundamentalist Mormon polygamists. It started, of course, with Big Love. I’m not a particularly huge fan of the show—I find the compound stuff stiflingly boring, and have never been able to muster up any sympathy for Bill Paxton’s character—but there’s something about the lives of the wives and the way they conduct this complex mental arithmetic to explain away human reactions like jealousy which captivates me. What’s implied on the show—and it’s reality TV counterpart Sister Wives which, yes, I’ve watched willingly—but is never really discussed directly enough for my tastes, is the way that their society values these women, giving little regard for their capacity for work or creativity beyond a mother’s work and past the inherent creativity of becoming a mom. This unstated shift in priorities from the societal norm seems to underscore a lot of the character motivations on the show, but the possible horrific implications of this are rarely more than alluded to—see Barb’s desperation to have the other wives procreate after she’s rendered infertile by cancer, or the way the husband on Sister Wives pressures his first wife to consider in vitro fertilization as their marriage has only produced one child—and never really explored extensively or directly. I picked up Irene Spencer’s autobiography, Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife hoping to find some direct discussion of these values, though it was with some hesitation. The focus on a family of isolated polygamists in the 1960s had me a bit worried that I’d find something closer to the compound stories on Big Love than a dissection of the daily tensions between men and women in this extremist religion. Luckily, though it seems that Spencer’s life may have included some of the violence of the fictional Grant family, she makes a conscious decision here to focus instead on her home life (stories about murder plots within her polygamist sect apparently make up the bulk of her companion volume, Cult Insanity). Ultimately, the story of her life proved to be a riveting read, especially for a modern feminist reader like myself. Irene is interesting; despite the fact that she was raised within a polygamist family herself, she has a very modern sensibility about relationships, and this sensibility is evident early in her life. As a girl, she was courted by an atheist who loved her deeply, and who she loved, in turn. Their relationship was passionate, reciprocal, and physical. However, because of the polygamist dogma of her childhood, she takes a vague “feeling” that she should instead marry her half-sister’s husband and live “The Principle” as testimony to divine intervention. She turns her back on the prospect of a modern, loving, monogamous life and instead moves to Mexico to become the second wife of a man who will eventually have many more. There’s an interesting tension here between Irene’s monogamous leanings and modern sensibilities, and her life as the de facto head of a massive household of women and children. Irene tells us over and over again of her budding sexuality and her desire to be loved, but her husband won’t sleep with her unless it’s for procreative purposes. Because he thus refuses to use birth control, this means that the poor woman has sex approximately once a year for their many years of marriage, and spends the ensuing time pregnant or nursing her thirteen children. The narrative becomes stifling here, but really only as stifling as her life. At one point, Irene is offered an out when a farm hand falls in love with her and offers to take her, and her children, away from their impoverished life. As a reader, you can’t help but want her to take him up on this, but unfortunately, according to her religion, this would make her not only a fallen woman but a servant in her husband’s heaven for all eternity—so she says no. It’s maddening, as is experiencing through her thirteen increasingly-dangerous pregnancies, which her doctor warns her against again and again. But rather than use birth control, her husband simply offers to stop sleeping with her, an impossible-to-consider reality for a love-starved woman. And so she risks her life (though she ultimately has her tubes tied, a choice that she knows will eternally damn her in the eyes of her religion) in order to remain obedient to her husband. Despite the fact that it risks her physical life, and despite the fact that her emotional and spiritual life is really no life at all. Which gets to the meat of what I find interesting about these stories: this is the danger found not just in Mormon polygamy but in all orthodox religious traditions that place a woman’s value on her procreative capacities alone. This is the same attitude which has Hasidic Jewish women at the head of massive broods of babies, the attitude that has seen the Catholic Church only recently embracing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS despite thousands of lives lost. It’s fascinating, and it’s sad, but I think it’s important to think about the extent of the impact of these religious principles on the lives of women even today. Irene’s story isn’t always perfectly written—she’s no prose master, and some of her anecdotes (one about her cluelessness about the popular music of the day particularly comes to mind) fall flat. But ultimately, this is a fascinating and worthwhile read about the ugliness of extremist religions and the impact they have on women. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Nov 30, 2010
|
Dec 11, 2010
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1442409053
| 9781442409057
| 3.88
| 41,198
| Mar 22, 2011
| Mar 22, 2011
|
In a richly realized future society, where every member of the younger generation faces death before age thirty, sixteen-year-old Rhine is kidnapped,...more
In a richly realized future society, where every member of the younger generation faces death before age thirty, sixteen-year-old Rhine is kidnapped, stolen away from her home and wedded against her will to Linden Ashby, the wealthy son of a governor. Captive in his Floridian mansion, she (and two other young women) must find a way to cope with this new marriage. For Rhine’s sisterwife Janna, coping means shutting down emotionally, barring her new husband access to all of the most intimate parts of herself. For thirteen-year-old sisterwife Cecily, coping is becoming a model bride, and conceiving a son for her husband almost immediately. But for Rhine, there’s only one way to stay afloat: escape. Lauren DeStefano’s debut is atmospheric, beautifully written soft-science-fiction, which seems to owe more than a little to Wuthering Heights (and, if I’m guessing right, the Mountain Goats album Tallahassee). Set in a sprawling, vividly-rendered estate, the prose is lit by splashes of horrific color: brown and orange lumpy citrus fruits litter the ground in the orange grove; the women swim through bright blue, holographic oceans in the pool; later, they dress in hot pink dresses described as looking like tinfoil. Through these colorful touches, DeStafano does a good job of making it clear that we’re in another world, despite the compelling human emotions of her characters. These emotions, centered on processing grief, on captivity, and on finding balance in a forced, unwanted marriage, are fundamentally more adult than adolescent. The expectations placed on the women, and the situations they find themselves in, are, likewise, adult situations. For example, I suspect few teenagers will truly appreciate Cecliy’s sadness at her inability to breastfeed her child. Ultimately, the ways in which Wither fails seem to arise more out of the novel’s positioning than anything inherent to its prose or story. Because this is a very slow, character-driven novel, and the motivations of the characters are fundamentally grown-up despite their youth. There is little black-or-white morality here. Characters who initially appear villainous—Rose, Cecily, even Linden himself—turn out to be victims of their circumstances, and their motivations (particularly the fact that Linden never forces himself sexually on Rhine, something many reviewers have noted) only make sense if viewed through this lens. When it comes down to it, I struggled a bit against the novel’s slow pacing and heavy, grown-up introspection at first. Then I put the book down, thought about it for a while, and decided to try approaching it as I would an adult novel, rather than YA, and found it much more rewarding. This is the second novel to which I very strongly had this reaction—the first was Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth, another book which heavily featured plotlines about marriage, and which languished in pretty prose and a dark tone. But I enjoyed Wither much more than I did The Forest of Hands and Teeth. It’s a more unified story, and the characters (all of the characters, really, but particularly the wives), are better drawn and more interesting. Is this science fiction perfect? Well, no—the rules of the “virus” (that boys die at 25 and girls at 20) make no sense, nor does the idea that the other nations of the world are submerged while the east coast of the United States remains intact. But Wither shares more in common with Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or McCarthy’s The Road than an Octavia Butler novel; science fiction is just an atmospheric conceit, present to create tension or to make the emotional situation of our characters that much more dire. I suspect that DeStafano started with the emotional plight of her characters, and let the setting grow from there, rather than crafting a dystopian situation and then creating characters as a means to explore it. In the end, I very much enjoyed Wither—something about its prose, its thoughtfulness, and its beautiful ending (lovely and open-ended, but we know how these things go in YA—we’ll undoubtedly get an unnecessary sequel) felt absolutely classic. However, I suspect that this crossover title will much more strongly appeal to adult audiences, especially women who enjoy thoughtful and poignant soft-SF a la The Time Traveler’s Wife, than teens seeking out the next Hunger Games. A review copy of this volume was generously provided by the publisher.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Mar 07, 2011
|
Mar 08, 2011
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0525423389
| 9780525423386
| 3.38
| 3,363
| Jun 14, 2011
| Jun 14, 2011
|
Sinister. That's the first word I'd use to describe Nova Ren Suma's young adult debut Imaginary Girls. It's the story of two sisters who live in a weed...more Sinister. That's the first word I'd use to describe Nova Ren Suma's young adult debut Imaginary Girls. It's the story of two sisters who live in a weedy backwoods area of New York State. One sister, our narrator Chloe, is considered the quieter shadow of big sis Ruby—a girl who somehow manages to bewitch an entire town into doing whatever she wants, no matter how sinister. But it's a slow-growing power, made all-the-more creepy by Chloe's obsessive, oftentimes fawning regard for Ruby. While the other denizens of their town are sometimes able to shake Ruby's spell—even a girl who Ruby may or may not have brought back from the dead seems to find her demand for whimsy and worship tiresome—Chloe's unable to differentiate herself from her sister even when it's in her own best interest. This creates a claustrophobic, uncomfortable read. The reader knows that Ruby is bad news, and bad news for Chloe. But Chloe refuses to listen, insisting again and again that Ruby knows best. "Sisters told each other every last thing; especially the younger sister," Chloe tells us, in a matter-of-fact manner that perhaps belies how insanely fucked up such an attitude is while neatly failing to acknowledge it, "The youngest sister couldn't have secrets. She was who she was because of who came first" (237, ARC edition). In this way, Imaginary Girls is a treatise on abuse and control, but of course this isn't the type of psychological abuse one is accustomed to reading about in young adult literature. Usually we read about boys hurting girls, or parents hurting children. That this is a story about an older sister who has her little sister wrapped around her little finger makes it all the more sinister. Weird. Creepy. Ruby is the kind of woman that's only hinted about in books like Kirsten Hubbard's Like Mandarin or Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride--a manic pixie dream girl gone horribly wrong. A witch who uses her seduction and charm to bend the world around her to her whims. But she's not quite as simple as all of that, either. Because Imaginary Girls is not a fantasy story, not exactly. Instead, it sits squarely in the slippery, unsettling realm of magical realism. I recently had a conversation with the ladies over at YA Highway where we struggled to define that genre. I cautiously submitted that a magical realist text is different from other types of contemporary fantasy. It's not enough to have fantastical elements in the real world. Instead, a book within the genre needs to have the boundaries of the fantastical elements shift constantly. An effective fantasy novel will give you some sort of framework for understanding it. Magical realism refuses that framework. As in a dream, the boundaries of the possible must always be moving, though the logic should still seem intuitive within the novel itself. It's a precarious balance—and the effect is quite often unsettling, bordering on horrifying. For this reason, I'm not entirely sure that Imaginary Girls will appeal to its target audience. I'll come right out and say that I didn't appreciate (or even really understand) magical realism as a teen. In fact, even two years ago I was criticizing Kelly Link's masterful Magic for Beginners as being too unsettling. Of the title story in that collection, I said, "when she casually mentions that the characters in 'Magic for Beginners' are fictional television characters, despite the fact that they otherwise seems completely grounded in our reality, I couldn't help but wonder: Why? To what end? How is the story enhanced by this?" I reread that story recently, and was pleased to find that I'd grown as a reader. I could see how perfectly Link utilizes the fantastic elements to underscore the poignant family story—and how the vertigo-inducing nature of that story enhanced the protagonist's uncertain family and romantic situation. In fact, it was a story that could not be told any other way. I would say that the same is true for Imaginary Girls. It needs to be a book that encompasses the supernatural but is not about the supernatural. I'm just not positive that teens will enjoy being unsettled in this way, but perhaps I was unique in my adolescent literal-mindedness. I'm uncertain, too, if the language will appeal to that age group. It's both beautiful and repetitive. For example, Suma writes, "There was the tattoo shop where Ruby got her eyebrow pierced, then decided she didn't want her eyebrow pierced and instead got her nose pierced, then decided she really didn't want anything pierced, not even her ears" (60), and most of the story is told this way, with negations, repetitions, clarifications. The pace isn't slow, not precisely. It is, instead, droning and hypnotic. Imaginary Girls could be considered more than a book but also a book of spells. It's perfectly conceived in this way, the language underscoring the thematics and story. It could be told in another way, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective. I'm just not entirely certain that today's young generation of Hunger Games-loving teens will fall so deeply for it. But I would not for a moment hesitate to suggest it for adult readers, particularly those who enjoy lovely, well-conceived language that enshrouds a haunting story about women and magic and control. It might sound silly, but I'd say that I was ensorcelled by Suma's story—captivated in the most literal sense of the term. Though my journey with Ruby wasn't always a comfortable one, I'm quite eager to see where Suma takes us next. A review copy of this volume was generously provided by the publisher. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Jun 20, 2011
| Jul 2011
|
Jun 12, 2011
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0142417718
| 9780142417713
| 3.45
| 4,795
| Jan 06, 2011
| Jan 06, 2011
|
XVI is not a feminist novel. I’m opening my review with this caveat because, as someone who owns a dog-eared copy of The Feminine Mystique, whose heroe...more XVI is not a feminist novel. I’m opening my review with this caveat because, as someone who owns a dog-eared copy of The Feminine Mystique, whose heroes are Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin, and who has, at times, stopped shaving her armpits (sometimes one just can’t be bothered), accounts of feminist content in Julia Karr’s debut were definitely a selling point for me. The initial premise of XVI make it sound as if it has feminist potential. In the near-future, girls are allowed to have sex on their sixteenth birthdays; at this time, they’re tattooed with the roman numerals “XVI” on their wrists to advertise their sexual availability. In public, they’re sexually harassed, raped, and assaulted, but in private, lower-class women are expected to maintain their purity so that they might be elected to serve as female companions to high ranking men on colonies out in space, a career move that their government promises will elevate their families above their impoverished origins. But, though this is, undeniably, a discussion of the dual pressures that young girls face in our society both to be sexual and remain pure, the ultimate conclusions of XVI seemed to me to be little more than tut-tutting about the sluttiness of teens. And therein lies the problem with this sort of narrative, particularly when it’s aimed at teens: too much of a focus on the evils of sexuality; the animalistic, uncontrollable urges of men; and the goodness of girls who choose to abstain, and readers are left with something that’s no better than a fifties morality tale where our intrepid heroine ends up pregnant, destitute, or dead—all because she chooses to have sex. And this is what happens to girls in XVI who, you know, do it. Or even want to do it. They end up homeless, murdered, raped, or burned-beyond-recognition. Most of the men in this universe are pedophiliac bogeymen who want little girls as their slaves, sexual or otherwise. We know that our hero Nina Oberon has depth because she’s squicked by the idea of having sex—we know that her friend Wei is truly awesome because she doesn’t have sex, either, despite the fact that she’s legally allowed to do so. We know that the designated love interest, Sal, is an okay guy because he tells Nina that he doesn’t want to do it, either. He just likes kissing. (My apologies, but I didn’t find this very realistic for a teenage boy. Not that all teenage boys are unmitigated horn-dogs or anything like that, but surely he wouldn’t mind having sex?) In this way, XVI sets up a false dichotomy for girls: “defend” your virginity, and have depth, and don’t die (or have lighter fluid poured on your face, and be set on fire), or be a shallow, mindless “sex-teen” who wears revealing clothing, enjoys flirting, and ultimately bites it in the end. (Significant, too, I think, that women in this society are protected from STDs, but not pregnancy . . . why? Really? Why? I don’t get what benefit this would have to anyone in this society.) The only hint at complexity here is during a scene where Nina realizes that—oh, my my!—she might actually enjoy having sex. I had hopes that this would lead to some discussion of healthy and safe ways for teens to explore their sexuality, but instead, she’s relieved of the possible burden of doing it when Sal tells her that he doesn’t want her to be a “sex-teen” either. Phew! All this would be fine, except there’s no hint of the real, myriad joys of sex, or how a teenager can keep herself safe and explore her sexuality in this world. Maybe it’s something that Karr plans to explore in future volumes, but it’s just too simplistically stated here, a stark reduction of the reality of adolescent life into a black-or-virgin-white morality. Karr’s argument is the same one that teenagers are getting in their abstinence-only sex ed classes, and it’s a fundamentally whacked, harmful one. Any way I can get an old copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves packaged with this book? I feel like we’ve fallen so far since the nineteen seventies. So, no, XVI is not a feminist book. Apart from these rather important issues, XVI is a mixed-bag. It has some of the silliest world building I’ve seen from a YA dystopian—goofy slang abounds, including “emo-detectors,” “sex-teen,” and “trannies.” And the writing, generally, is quite slip-shod. There were quite a few run-on sentences in my ebook that did not seem to be for stylistic effect. Transitions between scenes were abrupt and jarring. Dialogue was wooden. At times, the book seemed unfocused—though the back-cover copy promised that it was about the quasi-feminist issues I discuss above, the bulk of the story was really about Nina recovering from her mother’s death, joining a rebellion, escaping her murderous almost-step-father, and trying to find her supposedly-dead father (I won’t spoil this plot point, but I will say that when we reach a resolution, it’s an entirely listless, uninteresting one). But XVI did have something going for it: the characters. Nina and her friends were, without exception, well-rendered and interesting. More, they were incredibly true-to-life. Even Sandy, Nina’s sex-teen friend with whom she has a somewhat combative relationship, was sympathetic; their complicated friendship reminded me of fading friendships I shared with other girls as a teenager. And Nina has two male friends—Mike and Derek—real, platonic friends who act like real, messy boys. I can’t recall any YA novel I’ve read lately that’s done guy friends nearly so well. (Done less well? Awesome-side-character Wei’s stereotype of an Asian-mystic mother. A scene where she applies herbal medicine to Nina’s wounds and shows her a magic box that’s “around 794 years old” was just ridiculous, both for its unsubtle stereotyping and its needless specificity.) Likewise, Nina’s emotional situation, the story of grief over her mother’s death, of caring for her little sister while balancing life with her new group of friends, was realistic and compelling. For me, this was the real heart of the novel—not the poorly-conceived dystopic elements. Karr seems to genuinely understand the emotional situation of teenagers, and she knows how to craft them in all their thorny glory. Ally Condie could learn something from her, I think. Unlike Condie, Karr has significant room to grow on a prose and pacing level. But her approach to teenagers is still excellent, despite my feminist reservations about her chosen themes. There’s promise here, undeniably—even though XVI was sort of a hammy, poorly-conceived outing, I’ll be keeping an eye out for Karr’s future works. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jan 12, 2011
|
Jan 18, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0061962740
| 9780061962745
| 3.10
| 7,280
| Apr 26, 2011
| Apr 26, 2011
|
Talk about going in with preconceived notions of a book’s quality. 40 pages deep, and I was completely ready to pan Bumped. Megan McCafferty’s long-awa...more Talk about going in with preconceived notions of a book’s quality. 40 pages deep, and I was completely ready to pan Bumped. Megan McCafferty’s long-awaited follow-up to the Sloppy Firsts series is a tongue-in-cheek satire about a future where only teenagers are capable of reproduction. At the outset, the science fiction is hammy and laid on thick, full of FutureWords™ and sketchy world building. As I neared the end of the first part, I already had the bulk of my review worked out in my head. I'd talk about how McCafferty's earlier books were the most effective when she was illuminating character relationships or composing poignant scenes about adolescent love—not being clever. I'd write about how the conceits in Sloppy Firsts that left me coldest—the slangy cafeteria-table run-downs, the ridiculous teen-author-undercover subplot—where McCafferty aimed for inventiveness, but always fell short, utterly failed to ever ring true for me. I'd talk about how this novel hinged on such conceits, a belief in a world so alien in terms of human psychology that the human story fell apart. It would be a great, cutting, thoughtful negative review. It would get me lots of votes on GoodReads (the only reward for reading a bad book). It would be awesome. But then (oh crap), I began to really, really enjoy the book. So much for all those GoodReads votes! Because when it comes down to it, McCafferty's "first young adult novel" (in her foreword and acknowledgements, she refers to it in quotes, as though she doesn't quite believe it, either) is a biting comedy with a tender heart. As the story unfolds, we follow Harmony, a girl raised by religious extremists who see it as their duty to repopulate the Earth, and so marry their girls off young; and her twin sister, Melody, who has been raised by a pair of insane economists whose ideas about commodifying reproduction have spurred countless girls to sell off their reproductive fruits to the highest bidder; as they navigate their own relationship as well as sexual relationships with the boys around them. We meet these long-lost twins at sixteen, just after their reunion. Harmony, on the run from a bad marriage, journeys to secular America with plans to proselytize to her non-believer sister. Melody, meanwhile, is grappling with her identity as one of the few non-pregnant members of her social group, and is, all the while, resisting an obvious crush on her (too short to procreate with) childhood best friend. Their story is told in alternating voices. Harmony's voice is sweet, but sharply observant. Her religious devotion and questioning are recounted by McCafferty in a way that can only be called tender. In fact, Melody's voice was the one that I initially struggled with. It's peppered liberally with FutureSlang, to the point of sometimes losing clarity (I'd recommend that you just roll with it, as I did; everything will be explained by the novel's conclusion). Adding to my difficultly was the fact that much of this slang and terminology was icky, from muthahumping to Preggerz to FunBump to bumping. But about halfway through the novel, I began to realize that the instinctive revulsion that I felt at this book's obsession with sexualized stretch marks and its unwavering commitment to talk about things like mucus plugs was really the point. This is not a shy, demurring book. It is, instead, a critique of the reproductive underpinnings of both modern religion's focus on purity and secular society's focus on sexuality. Through its intertwining narratives, McCafferty weaves a subtle message about the similarities of these two drastically different cultures, and illuminates their biggest commonality: the way they devalue women beyond their reproductive capacity. However, and to my delight, she still managed to create a story that was utterly sex-positive. In light of her premise, I feared that we might get a lot of handwringing about how young girls should abstain, a la XVI. Instead, Bumped is refreshingly pro-lovemaking (though the society she depicts is not). The sexual experiences of our dual narrators are diverse, but always well-justified and easy to understand. Even as I was cheering Melody's choice to step away from her babymakin' business, I was also cheering Harmony's growing (and clearly sexual) romance with pro-babymaker Jondoe. Honestly, I never thought I'd be celebrating the sexual and spiritual love of a pair of evangelical, verse-spouting Christians, but there I was. So, sure, there's some hammyness here. The mistaken-identity plot with the twins is one you've seen a million times before, and, yeah, all this talk about negging and pregging did make me feel kinda strange. But nevertheless, Megan McCafferty has schooled me about counting my, uh, eggs before they're hatched. This isn't Sloppy Firsts but it's still a damned good read. A copy of this book was generously provided by the publisher for review purposes.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Mar 13, 2011
| Mar 13, 2011
|
Mar 13, 2011
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1561455784
| 9781561455782
| 3.57
| 401
| Apr 01, 2011
| Apr 01, 2011
|
JJ Johnson’s 2011 Peachtree debut This Girl is Different raised a note of nostalgia in me. Because, you see, there were rebels in my high school, too....more
JJ Johnson’s 2011 Peachtree debut This Girl is Different raised a note of nostalgia in me. Because, you see, there were rebels in my high school, too. I attended high school in the era of Columbine. Back then, the administration figured it would be a good idea to call any kid who regularly wore black in for questioning as to whether they posed a bomb thread. At the time, I’d just started to go a little weird myself, but not so far to invite scrutiny. I mostly watched from afar as those who were accused of being part of a pseudo-trenchcoat-mafia struck out against teachers who threatened their individuality. Perhaps naively, but still bravely, they put up websites making fun of teachers and slipped secret messages into their yearbook quotes. Some were caught—some had to deal with very real repercussions. But at the very least, they weren’t alone in speaking up. All this is to say that I had some sympathy for Evie, the formerly homeschooled heroine of This Girl is Different. I recognized the vociferous and strident commitment to first amendment rights, as well as Evie’s very real frustration at being silenced. As Evie enters high school for the first time (intent on bolstering her chances to eventually attend Cornell), she’s disgusted to see how the students are oppressed—and how she’s the only one who notices. It was that last bit that raised my first note of concern with the novel. Having been in high school , I know that it’s not entirely unusual to find a sizable clan of teenage rebels. But Evie is presented as the lone iconoclast of her institution. Though she has a friend who feigns some interest with speaking up against injustice, otherwise Evie paints the school as being chock full of obsequious sheep. Really? Not a single black-clad snarker who would appreciate a high school uprising? Though it’s possible that this was intentional on Johnson’s part, perhaps a nod at Evie’s own limits of perception, it strained the plausibility of her story—even more so since the entire narrative hinges on Evie’s mere presence disrupting the tenuous calm of her school. What’s more, Evie’s voice itself never quite rang true for me. She sounded much younger than a senior in high school—her voice would have been more accurate for, perhaps, a high school freshman. She’s very talky, naïve to the point of homeschooling cliché, and her dogged repetition of the fact that “this girl is different” suggested, rather, that “this girl had something to prove.” Confounding this were the strange, omnipresent lapses in pop culture references. One repeated reference to Avatar, particularly, struck me as ham-fisted and awkward and not quite right (there was also a particularly painful exchange involving “more cowbell”). I appreciate that Johnson was trying to include technological references that kids today might understand—but every time one didn’t quite work, I was jolted from the narrative. Some of these problems were pervasive. For example, Evie’s mother is a hippie. Though she is alleged to be a Phish fan, her cultural references are otherwise much more in keeping for a crunchy 60s mom than a crunchy millennial one. Hippies just don’t give their children names like “Evensong Morningstar” anymore! All this is too bad, because once the main conflict picked up speed, I actually really enjoyed Evie’s story. Her emotional responses to her best friend and quasi-boyfriend were spot-on, and (though some of the story played out in a slightly over the top manner) I found myself reading rapidly through to the conclusion. But ultimately, I came very close to putting this one down because it was almost two hundred pages before I believed any of it. And plausibility is important to me—I need to believe in the characters and situations, no matter how many times you tell me that “this girl is different.” I received a free copy of this book through the publisher and Netgalley.com (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Feb 13, 2011
|
Feb 13, 2011
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0061962767
| 9780061962769
| 3.37
| 2,438
| Apr 24, 2012
| Apr 24, 2012
|
Like the first volume in the Bumped series, Thumped is a unique sort of beast in YA speculative fiction. In a world full of poetic, but fundamentally...more
Like the first volume in the Bumped series, Thumped is a unique sort of beast in YA speculative fiction. In a world full of poetic, but fundamentally serious romance-focused dystopian novels, these are chatty, comedic novels whose primary purpose seems to be to comment on our own society’s foibles, particularly our current reproductive climate. McCafferty’s story–of twin girls raised in far-different societies who have both faced pressure to reproduce before the age of eighteen thanks to a global reproductive crisis–doesn’t take the dire tone of more traditional sociological science fiction. Instead, it’s chatty, tongue-in-cheek, kind of gross, and apparently light. But don’t mistake this for jokey chick-lit. The rollicking tone actually conceals a rather tender and incisive interior. Thumped begins eight months after the conclusion of Bumped. The twins, Melody and Harmony, are preparing for their widely-advertised double twin birth. You might remember that this doesn’t quite jive with the ending of Bumped–all will be revealed in good time, though I have to admit that I didn’t think this twist was the best of what McCafferty offered us within Thumped‘s pages. In fact, generally the pacing was all a bit scattered. As was the case with Bumped (and, come to think of it, the Jessica Darling novels), important events often happen off-screen–events that were emotionally relevant enough that I wondered if they shouldn’t have been included here. Instead, over Thumped‘s first half, we have establishing scenes, a caper-like kidnapping that was a little rough around the edges, and a light rehash of the school drama of the first novel. Through these scenes especially, I couldn’t help but feel a little weary about Melody’s more pedestrian, slang-laden plotlines. Harmony’s voice is undoubtedly the stronger, and it was interesting to note how McCafferty flawlessly incorporated her pregnancy into her narration. Harmony feels like a teenage girl who is on the verge of popping out a few babies. She’s mournful of her lost childhood, physically uncomfortable, and a little apprehensive. In contrast, Melody’s plot felt a bit trifling. The girls continue their romances of the first novel. Again, Harmony’s relationship with Jondoe is the more tender and better developed of the two, at least initially. But the real treat here–and the meat of the novel–is the development of the relationship between the two sisters. After the events of the first novel, I hadn’t expected this–but the twins are abruptly vividly real in their relationship dynamic. It’s an imperfect sisterhood (as all sisterhoods are, I suppose), but it’s also a powerfully written testament to friendships between girls and friendships between sisters. The scene where they discuss their long-lost mother was perhaps the most moving of the novel: “With the names she gave us, she had to love music,” Melody said, with an uncharacteristically faraway look in her eyes, “. . . I bet she was more like you in that way, and it’s sweet that you’re actually living up to your name, and then some.” The development of the sisterly relationship at the center of this duology represents a certain maturing of the themes found in the first Bumped novel (where girls were just as often pitted against one another than not). In fact, generally I’d say that Thumped presents grown-up versions of Bumped‘s themes. Rather than ruminations on oft-too-young sexualization of teenagers, we have an examination of the reproductive pressures faced by mothers both young and old. Teenage girls are encouraged to see their children not as people but as experiences (something that has happened historically to young unmarried women pressured into giving up their babies for adoption); bodily choices–from the type of birth one has to whether one breastfeeds–are reduced for the declared good of the child. Just as was the case for the first volume, these are real issues faced by real women, sometimes very young women, and it was stirring to see McCafferty tackle them the way she did. In fact, by the novel’s conclusion it was all very “stirring”–as the girls decide what to do with their reproductive futures, facing the melancholy truth of their universe, and ours, I found myself getting very choked up. If YA dystopians have garnered any consistent criticism, it’s that they’re not socially relevant enough. McCafferty’s novels stand as an answer to that. Her world might not be our world in a literal sense, but for all intents and purposes the conflicts faced by both Melody and Harmony are identical to the conflicts faced by women and girls today. These are important questions–and these are important books.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Apr 05, 2012
| Apr 07, 2012
|
Dec 27, 2011
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0316175560
| 9780316175562
| 3.75
| 9,035
| Sep 05, 2011
| Sep 05, 2011
|
Second books can be tricky. Even when authors produce standalone novels, eschewing the literary world's current hunger for sequels and series, they ha...more
Second books can be tricky. Even when authors produce standalone novels, eschewing the literary world's current hunger for sequels and series, they have a difficult task ahead of them: producing work that's more than just a retread of earlier success. In some ways, I know that comparisons between Kody Keplinger's first novel, The DUFF, and her second, Shut Out, are inevitable. It's not just their bright, girly covers that tie them together but thematics (a teenage girl's ownership of her sexuality) and character (the poor family of origin with a complicated past; the control-freak girl; the supportive friends). But, while Shut Out does occasionally falter in much the same way that The DUFF did, it also stands quite capably on its own merits. First for the bad: I thougt that the opening chapters of Shut Out suffered from the same sometimes-awkward writing that I noticed a year ago when reading The DUFF. The dialog in both begins overly deliberate and sometimes clunky; there are too many awkward physical descriptors and said bookisms. But you'd be wrong to judge either book on these first chapters. As Keplinger warms up, so do her prose stylistics, becoming more natural and confidently voiced. More, I was quickly enveloped in the story. I suspect quite a bit of what appeals to me about Keplinger's books is how familiar the lives of her protagonists feel. Shut Out brings us another working class family. Lissa lives at home with her dad, who has been wheelchair-bound since the car accident that also took away her mother, and with her older brother, who has dropped out of graduate school to help out at home. The men of her family are fans of the local high school football team, so when Lissa brings home Randy, a high school football star, he quickly becomes a part of the family. There's something real, tender, and sad about the way the men in this book bond while Lissa makes them food and mothers them. This is the first of Lissa's many foolish and real choices in Shut Out. Like Bella Swan, she falls into a caretaker role that isn't entirely fair. However, it was clear to me that this domesticity wasn't necessarily meant to be a positive trait, but rather a realistic reaction to feeling motherless and adrift and to having one's needs ignored by the grown-ups around her. People generally ignore Lissa's needs. Her boyfriend, for example, is so embroiled in a rivalry with the high school soccer team that he abandons their trysts entirely to play pranks with his teammates. Lissa finally gets fed up—she proposes a sex strike against the boys on both teams until they agree to abandon the rivalry entirely. This sex strike is the central premise of Shut Out, and its selling point (it's a retread of the Lysistrata). As Lissa unites with the other girls, she begins to struggle against the pressures and stereotypes they all face. I found this message more organic and interesting than the one found in The DUFF. Honestly, I never entirely believed Keplinger's first book's message that "we all feel like DUFFs sometimes"—far more convincing to me was the message here that "teenage girls face all sorts of sexual pressures and deserve to be in control of their sexual lives despite the schizophrenic attitudes of our society toward female sexuality." It's a messier, and less optimistic theme, maybe, but it rang truer for me. As in our world, in the world of Shut Out some girls do it and some girls don't. But nearly all of them struggle against their reputations. But far from being a merely didactic undercurrent, this message actually provides a dramatic reveal about one of the characters—one I didn't see coming at all, and which spurred me to page back through the book and examine it in this new light. It's a neat little narrative trick, and one with Keplinger utilizes deftly, clearly illustrating her control over her plot and characters. As the story progresses, Lissa continues to stumble forward. Again, she's a protagonist who often makes terrible choices, who is often blind to the truth in front of her, who is sometimes selfish and stubborn if only to cover up her own weaknesses. Like Bianca from The DUFF, she suffers from certain control issues—but they're more fully fledged here, and realistically problematic. I found Lissa to be a terrifically messy heroine. Her mistakes might not be fun for teenagers to read, if only because they likely hit a little too close to home, but they're certainly true to life. She's struggling—with her mother's death, with her father's disability, with change and with sex and with growing up. Her problems aren't all solved in the end, although Keplinger again concludes on an optimistic note. We're given the impression that Lissa is a work-in-progress—as we all are, really. And as a reader who craves honesty even from books emblazoned with neons and pinks, I wouldn't have it any other way. Disclosure: This book was generously provided by the publisher for review purposes. I'm also personally acquainted with the author. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Aug 04, 2011
|
Jun 12, 2011
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0807010707
| 9780807010709
| 3.73
| 455
| Jan 01, 2009
| Mar 01, 2009
|
I'm fascinated by TLC reality series which focus a cheerful lens on families of religious outliers. On the surface, the Browns and the Duggars reflect...more
I'm fascinated by TLC reality series which focus a cheerful lens on families of religious outliers. On the surface, the Browns and the Duggars reflect a seemingly-idyllic and mostly-normal lifestyle with a twist--too-many wives, too many children. It's only close viewing that begins to review the religious underpinnings of their situation. I'm already fairly familiar with the polygamous religious philosophies underlying the lives of the Browns (I can't get enough books about fundamentalist Mormons), but I was less familiar with the philosophies at the core of the Quiverfull movement--a philosophy behind certain sects of Evangelical Christianity which commands women not only to eschew birth control but also to always be sweet, to only wear skirts and dresses, to present an image of perfect wifely submission. There are a few websites which detail the truth behind Quiverfull (the most notable penned by ex-practitioners), but I hoped I would find Kathryn Joyce's Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement to be enlightening. What I found instead was a bit of a mixed bag. At its best, Quiverfull is fascinating and frightening. Kathryn Joyce traces the rise of this movement among Evangelicals, uncovering some of its darker secrets--how women are taught that their worth stems from their childbearing capacity, how the tenets of feminism have been twisted into a straw bogeyman and blamed for all of society's ills by practitioners. It's all because we don't listen to the mens, you see, that we're unhappy. This is the real juicey stuff in Joyce's argument. This exploration helps to explore the necessity of modern feminism. If you're isolated from these communities, you might believe that our work is mostly done--no one questions our right to work, to make our own reproductive choices, to live freely and happily and extricate ourselves from violent or toxic situations if the need be--right? But the truth is more thorny than that, as Joyce uncovers. The patriarchy is, in fact, alive and kicking even in America--there are men (and women!) who would deny you your fundamental human rights because the Bible says you should live a certain way. Chilling! But interspersed with this stronger primary argument are anecdotes that often seem to take Joyce far afield from the topic at hand. One of the longest chapters concerns a family's unsuccessful involvement in the movement. It details their attempts to find a church where they fit in, and the church's subsequent shunning of them because the wife was too strident and too outspoken. Anecdotes like these go on entirely too long and felt simply irrelevant here. There was a gossipy quality to these chapters that unsettled me, and not in a particularly thrilling way. It felt, at times, like a tendency toward idle gossip--and gossip about someone I didn't really care about, either. So this wasn't quite the strong, cohesive account I hoped it would be. It's still a fairly instructive read, but for the time being, it seems the really must-have accounts of the quiverfull movement remain to be found online. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Feb 23, 2012
| Feb 23, 2012
|
Feb 22, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1416937730
| 9781416937739
| 3.48
| 789
| Apr 19, 2011
| Apr 19, 2011
|
Anvilicious. If, unlike me, you don’t allow large portions of your life to be sucked away by the website TVtropes, you might not be familiar with this...more Anvilicious. If, unlike me, you don’t allow large portions of your life to be sucked away by the website TVtropes, you might not be familiar with this term. It refers to an aspect of a story so obvious that the writer might as well have hit you over the head with it. As the trope page says: A portmanteau of anvil and delicious, malicious or vicious, depending on the usage, anvilicious describes a writer's and/or director's use of an artistic element, be it line of dialogue, visual motif, or plot point, to so obviously or unsubtly convey a particular message that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head. Frequently, the element becomes anvilicious through unnecessary repetition, but true masters can achieve anviliciousness with a single stroke. Stories that are anvilicious aren't necessarily bad—for example, I'd say that every single episode of Degrassi Junior High was completely anvilicious, and yet there was some genuine charm in the soap operatic, but complex, plotting. Anvilicious stories are also not necessarily wrong--often the writer has a point, and a very good one! But the problem with a lack of artfulness in conveying a worthy message is that you risk alienating your audience completely, reducing them to eye-rolls and sighs. There's something fundamentally embarrassing about being lectured. Sadly, though it was, in many ways, a story with merit, Boyfriends with Girlfriends by Alex Sanchez was utterly anvilicious. It's the story of two pairs of male-female best buds—bisexual Sergio and his lesbian friend Kimiko; out-and-proud Lance and his questioning galpal Allie—as they navigate their identities and relationships in suburbia. Between mall dates, Lance grapples with his belief that bisexuality is totally a cop-out even as he's falling for Lance. Meanwhile, Allie forges a friendship with and wrestles with her blossoming feelings for Kimiko. And all of these characters must deal with the repercussions of being out—or not—to their families. I'll come right out and say that I think that Sanchez's message is a worthy one. Lance's biphobia was the sort I heard a lot of in high school—"Bi's a lie!" and all of that. Hell, it's not like I can even pretend that things "Get Better" for bi kids when we grow up and leave the burbs. Allie's story—of a hazy awareness of a more complex truth beyond just liking boys—was especially accurate, right down to the creepy, salacious response of her boyfriend when he finds out she's been dreaming of girls. But Sanchez does nobody a favor by presenting the issue so anviliciously. He lays it on thick beginning in the first chapter, as Lance hems and haws about how bisexuals are just kidding themselves. And he doesn't let up for the duration of the book. The last paragraph ends with the image of a rainbow kite soaring through the air above one of our kissing couples. I wish I were kidding. Oh, how I wish I were kidding. So as much as I strongly empathized with the message he was trying to communicate, I just think he missed the mark here. And hit a big ol' anvil instead. I'm a grown woman, and reading this book was just a little embarrassing, even for me. I felt like I did in elementary school when they made us watch movies sponsored by Tampax. I can't imagine that teenagers—the sighing, sarcastic purveyors of cool—would be any more amenable to a book told with such heavy-handedness. And that's too bad, because it's not only Sanchez's point that has some merit. I'll admit that I wasn't overtly fond of his writing style—he used a roving POV that jumped from place to place even within the same conversation—but his characters were ridiculously well-drawn and accurate. Initially I was afraid that he was engaging in some cultural stereotyping, particularly with Kimiko, but by the book's mid-point she proved to be both very complex and very real, right down to her adorkably adolescent poetry. All of the characters had palpable chemistry in their romantic and platonic relationships. I'd easily call them "charming," in addition to feeling like real kids I went to high school with. They were the reason I gritted my teeth and kept reading, through all the glurge. I even misted up a little when one character came out of the closet to her family. But I'm afraid that this book's charm, and the merit of its message, might miss its primary audience, who really do need it. Even if, perhaps, they don't need to hear them in a book that's filled with hand-wringing and interior monologues about why it's not cool to hate on bisexuals. It's not that Sanchez is wrong--not at all! But I think teens might be too busy rolling their eyes (and for good reason) to really hear it. A review copy of this book was generously provided by the publisher for review purposes. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Mar 16, 2011
| Mar 19, 2011
|
Mar 16, 2011
| Hardcover
|
Loading...
